A group blog to promote discussion, debate and insight into the history, particularly religious, of America's founding. Any observations, questions, or comments relating to the blog's theme are welcomed.

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Sunday, December 25, 2016

This article from 2006 is actually about much more. But I focus on what I put in the title. Walter Berns, a Straussian, is one of the folks who turned me on to studying America's political theology in detail. Many of the key passages in Berns' book Making Patriots are discussed here.

Before I get into Frohnen's discussion, I will report what I see as the weakest part of Berns' thesis. As I quoted in this article I wrote for Liberty Magazine (that was published a number of years after I submitted it to them), Berns posits "Nature's God" was non-interventionist. Reading the works, indeed the personal letters where they were free to speak their mind, of the three heterodox thinkers responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence -- Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams -- we see each believed in an active personal God.

On the other hand, a more challenging thesis is how compatible the rights grating God of Nature is with the God of Christianity or Judaism, etc. As Berns wrote:

We were the first nation to declare its independence by appealing not to
the past but to the newly discovered “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s
God,” and this had (and has) consequences for patriotism. Whereas the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob imposed duties on all men (see Exodus
20:1-17), “Nature’s God” endowed all men with rights; and, whereas the
God of the New Testament commanded all men to love God and their
neighbors as themselves (see Matthew 22:37-40), Nature’s God created a
state of nature in which everyone was expected to take care of himself
and, as “America’s philosopher” said (see John Locke, Treatises II, sec.
6), take care of others only “when his own preservation comes not in
competition.” And so long as he remains in the state of nature, he has
the right to do what he is naturally inclined to do, and what he is
naturally inclined to do is not to take care of others. To say the
least, he is not naturally inclined to be a patriotic citizen.15

Indeed, again quoting Berns, "where does the Bible speak of unalienable or natural rights, or of the liberty to worship or not to worship as one pleases?"*

The notion of natural rights was discovered in "nature" through "reason," not from the texts on the Bible. And Christendom had a fairly long tradition of incorporating essences founded in nature through reason, as Aquinas incorporated Aristotle. Still, Berns' thesis is that what was now being incorporated through "reason" was not "traditional" or "old" (as Aristotle was), but rather something "new."

Frohnen, moderately critical or Berns' thesis, agrees somewhat:

Even when Aquinas (following Augustine) stated that an unjust law seems
like no law at all, he did not then recommend revolt in all instances,
instead advising submission where too much unrest would flow from
opposition. The fragility of social order, and the dangers of disorder,
demand caution in seeking reformed institutions or policies.

*The purpose of this post is simply to highlight some of the key issues. For an extensive analysis, you will have to read Frohnen's entire article. However, I will put one of Frohnen's footnotes under the microscope and quibble with it. It's footnote 18 and it relates to Berns' assertion quoted above on the right not to worship:

I would note, here, Berns’s insertion of the “right” “not to worship as
one pleases,” which is found nowhere in the Declaration or elsewhere in
our tradition.

It's true the Declaration never explicitly invokes "liberty of conscience." But it does explicitly invoke an unalienable right to "liberty." As Berns notes in the book, of all the rights that "liberty" might encompass, conscience, as it was understood, was without question (that is, not subject to argument) the most "unalienable." So yes, "liberty of conscience" is part of the Declaration's teachings.

And Jefferson, in a public writing (indeed, one that got him in trouble with the then forces of religious correctness), "Notes on the State of Virginia," describing the radical unalienability of conscience stated:

But our rulers can have
authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted
to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted,
we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our
God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such
acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury
for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no
god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

This is what Berns refers to when he noted natural rights doctrine necessarily teaches a right not to worship as one pleases.

Remembering the important things, as these men did, seems longer ago and even farther away with each passing year, and to some, even more silly. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all those here gathered: May we smile today, give thanks, and be inspired in the coming year to perpetuate their silliness...

It was on Christmas Eve 1968 that the astronauts of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, became the first of mankind to see an earthrise from the orbit of the moon, and looking back on us, they spoke these words:

Anders: "We are now approaching lunar sunrise. And, for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you...

"In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."

Lovell: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

Borman: "And God said, Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good."

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth."

Sunday, December 18, 2016

From Brandon Ambrosino here. A big taste, taking us back to the late 18th Century:

Thomas Paine famously tackled this question in his 1794 Age of
Reason, in a discussion of multiple worlds. A belief in an infinite
plurality of worlds, argued Paine, “renders the Christian system of
faith at once little and ridiculous and scatters it in the mind like
feathers in the air”. It isn’t possible to affirm both simultaneously,
he wrote, and “he who thinks that he believes in both has thought but
little of either.” Isn’t it preposterous to believe God “should quit the
care of all the rest” of the worlds he’s created, to come and die in
this one? On the other hand, “are we to suppose that every world in the
boundless creation” had their own similar visitations from this God? If
that’s true, Paine concludes, then that person would “have nothing else
to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of
deaths, with scarcely a momentary interval of life”.

In a
nutshell: if Christian salvation is only possible to creatures whose
worlds have experienced an Incarnation from God, then that means God’s
life is spent visiting the many worlds throughout the cosmos where he is
promptly crucified and resurrected. But this seems eminently absurd to
Paine, which is one of the reasons he rejects Christianity.

But
there’s another way of looking at the problem, which doesn’t occur to
Paine: maybe God’s incarnation within Earth’s history “works” for all
creatures throughout the Universe. This is the option George Coyne,
Jesuit priest and former director of the Vatican Observatory, explores
in his 2010 book Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life
and the Theological Implications.

“How could he be God and leave
extra-terrestrials in their sin? God chose a very specific way to redeem
human beings. He sent his only Son, Jesus, to them… Did God do this for
extra-terrestrials? There is deeply embedded in Christian theology… the
notion of the universality of God’s redemption and even the notion that
all creation, even the inanimate, participates in some way in his
redemption.”

There’s yet another possibility. Salvation itself
might be exclusively an Earth concept. Theology doesn’t require us to
believe that sin affects all intelligent life, everywhere in the
Universe. Maybe humans are uniquely bad. Or, to use religious language,
maybe Earth is the only place unfortunate enough to have an Adam and
Eve. Who is to say our star-siblings are morally compromised and in need
of spiritual redemption? Maybe they have attained a more perfect
spiritual existence than we have at this point in our development.

As Davies notes, spiritual thinking requires an animal to be both
self-conscious and “to have reached a level of intelligence where it can
assess the consequences of its actions”. On Earth, this kind of
cognition is at best a few million years old. If life exists elsewhere
in the Universe, then it’s very unlikely that it’s at the exact same
stage in its evolution as we are. And given the immense timeline of the
existence of the Universe, it’s likely that at least some of this life
is older, and therefore farther along in their evolution than we.
Therefore, he concludes, “we could expect to be among the least
spiritually advanced creatures in the Universe.”

Sunday, December 11, 2016

...as does much of today's Republican Party as well, to be honest [including one Donald Trump]. The "general welfare" is too ensconced in the national fabric to ever pull the rug out from those whose survival has come to depend upon it.

But once upon a time, all but widows and orphans were expected to rely upon themselves.

The act was founded, avowedly, on the principle that the phrase in the constitution which authorizes Congress "to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare," was an extension of the powers specifically enumerated to whatever would promote the general welfare; and this, you know, was the federal doctrine. Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.

I think the passage and rejection of this bill a fortunate incident. Every State will certainly concede the power; and this will be a national confirmation of the grounds of appeal to them, and will settle forever the meaning of this phrase, which, by a mere grammatical quibble, has countenanced the General Government in a claim of universal power. For in the phrase, "to lay taxes, to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare," it is a mere question of syntax, whether the two last infinitives are governed by the first or are distinct and co-ordinate powers; a question unequivocally decided by the exact definition of powers immediately following. It is fortunate for another reason, as the States, in conceding the power, will modify it, either by requiring the federal ratio of expense in each State, or otherwise, so as to secure us against its partial exercise. Without this caution, intrigue, negotiation, and the barter of votes might become as habitual in Congress, as they are in those legislatures which have the appointment of officers, and which, with us, is called "logging," the term of the farmers for their exchanges of aid in rolling together the logs of their newly-cleared grounds.

Friday, December 9, 2016

If folks like Joe Farah don't want to get labeled "fake news," they should stop making these mistakes, even as they have been called out many times before for this particular one.

A taste:

“We have staked the whole future of
American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We
have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the
capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and
all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain
ourselves according to the Ten Commandments.”

– James Madison

Now that we have a president-elect who seems to understand how
government that tried to do too much ends up doing nothing but harm,
wouldn’t it be nice if he learned about and talked about the very best
kind of government – self-government?

The
deck of those four or five seems to be tilted in favor of the thesis that it
was certain "key" or elite figures who possessed more heterodox ideas
that were in tension with those of the more orthodox powers that be.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

When I teach introductory or ethical portions of various American law courses, I usually lay the foundations with broad principles law seeks to protect and promote. And I go to America's Foundations (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Jocke Locke, etc.).

As noted above (parenthetically) we do the Declaration and John Locke. I don't put "pursuit of happiness" on the list; though I do discuss how in Locke's original it was "life, liberty and property" and Thomas Jefferson changed it from "property" to "pursuit of happiness."

The classes I teach tend to be survey classes (that is we don't get too deep into the tall weeds). So I attempt to briefly gloss over what I am about to write. First, scholars debate why Jefferson and the Declaration's other authors made this change and what, if anything it means. Left leaning scholars, I have observed, tend to emphasize Jefferson did this to give short shrift to property rights. Others, I have observed, argue simply the right to "pursue happiness" means "property rights."

To me and others, on the face of it, the rights to "liberty" and "the pursuit of happiness" sound like a redundancy.

I suspect however, such was a bit of wisdom the authors of the Declaration attempted to impart that traces to Aristotle (Eudaimonia). For reasons I need not get into in this post, I reject the argument that the Declaration and American Founding ought to be understood that there is only a right to do what's right, or that there can be no right to do wrong.

There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in
the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue
and happiness; ...

In other words, in order to be truly happy (or perhaps we can say happiest), you must do what's virtuous. Certain unvirtuous behaviors may, in short, make us feel good; but we will probably wake up the next day feeling worse than we did before we did the dirty deed.

So use your liberty wisely. You can use it to do what's right or perhaps not right; but if you use it to do the latter, you won't end up happiest. Perhaps not happy at all.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Following the logic of their positions, Strauss and
Voegelin agree on crucial points in the development of Western thought
but diverge on the role of Christianity. For Strauss, Western thought is
a philosophical drama in which the classical philosophers and their
medieval developers made virtue the standard for politics; this approach
provoked the accusation of modern thinkers that the ancients “aimed too
high” and that one should lower the goal of politics to the
satisfaction of selfish human passions in a regime of freedom and
material prosperity. While the modern revolt against any authority above
man at first glorified scientific reason in the conquest of nature, it
eventually led to the destruction of reason and produced the crisis of
moral relativism or nihilism—the denial of any objective standard of
right and wrong and the complete forgetting of eternity. Faced with this
situation, Strauss sought to recover the classical rationalism of
Socrates, which he understood to be a kind of zetetic (or searching)
skepticism that allowed for rational standards of morality in natural
right.

For Voegelin, the development
of Western thought is mostly a religious drama (“history is Christ writ
large”) in which Christianity changed human consciousness in ways that
make it impossible to return to classical philosophy. While Christianity
advanced the consciousness of the West by elevating the dignity of all
persons, it also created a problem for political authority by dividing
the spiritual and temporal into two realms and by radically secularizing
or “de-divinizing” the political realm. This division eventually
provoked a reaction among medieval thinkers like Joachim of Flora who
sought to re-connect the two realms by giving politics an eschatological
dimension. Their efforts produced a deformed kind of spiritual
knowledge that Voegelin calls Gnosticism—the attempt to realize heaven
on earth through secularized political religions, such as radical
Puritanism, progressive liberalism, Comte’s “religion of humanity,”
socialism, communism, and fascism. The history of the West is thus a
Christianized history of consciousness that leads to misguided efforts
to bring about worldly salvation through utopian ideologies, resulting
in the totalitarian tyrannies of the modern age. Faced with this
situation, Voegelin sought to recover the primary experience of openness
to transcendence in the “mystic-philosophers” of earlier ages in the
hope of restoring the authentic basis of order.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Voegelin was indeed quite critical of Locke on those occasions when he
wrote about him, labeling Locke among “the most repugnant, dirty,
morally corrupt appearances in the history of humanity”1
because Voegelin saw Locke as “an ideological constructor, who brutally
destroys every philosophical problem in order to justify the political
status quo.”2

Leo Strauss and Eric
Voegelin, and their respective followers, disagree on much. One thing in
which they were agreed is that John Locke was up to something.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

“The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend partly on chance but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being of course determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants.”--E. H. Carr

Historiography consists partly of the study of historians and partly of the study of historical method, the study of the study of history. Many eminent historians have turned their hand to it, reflecting on the nature of the work they undertake and its relationship both to the reader and to the past. Carr was a well-known authority on the history of Soviet Russia, with which he was in ideological sympathy. Invited to deliver the 1961 George Macaulay Trevelyan lectures, Carr chose as his theme the question ‘What is History?’ and sought to undermine the idea, then very much current, that historians enjoy a sort of objectivity and authority over the history they study. At one point he pictured the past as a long procession of people and events, twisting and turning so that different ages might look at each other with greater or lesser clarity.

He warned, however, against the idea that the historian was in any sort of commanding position, like a general taking the salute; instead the historian is in the procession with everyone else, commenting on events as they appear from there, with no detachment from them nor, of course, any idea of what events might lie in the future.

In short, historians are entitled to their opinion, but it's not necessarily any better than normal people's. And although some individuals are quite brilliant in forecasting the future, social psychologist Phillip Tetlock's famous study proved that when grouped together [say, as "Historians Against Trump"], experts' predictions were worse than those of dart-throwing monkeys!

In the end, there's really no difference between a consensus and a mob; the wise individual speaks only for himself.

One of these days I'm going to write a piece examining how current
Western liberal democracies reflect the different ideas of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke
and Jean Jacques Rousseau (and the British republicans as a proxy for Rousseau or
vice versa). The current system of bureaucracy, including military
bureaucracy is Hobbsean. That he, unlike Locke was unpopular among
America's Founders is irrelevant: His vision of huge government
prevailed.

To speak of a "republican" tradition in
contradistinction to Locke's "liberalism" is important because many
scholars after most notably Bernard Bailyn argued republicanism
prevailed over liberalism. I am suspicious of this claim and have
concluded there were simply viable streams of thought that were in
tension with one another (harmonized as unified by the "Whigs").

Likewise with egalitarian republican Rousseau. He wasn't popular
in America. But both present day America and Europe have similar safety
nets, redistribution of wealth and income, and regulations on
businesses, with Europe tending to be slightly more progressive. A
difference in degree, not kind.

Late 18th Century England and America may not have cared for Rousseau,
but they did have their own stream of "republicans" who argued for
economic leveling on very similar grounds. They tended to do so using biblical language. However, Rousseau was, at least exoterically, a
theist who claimed to be a Christian.

So we can swap Harrington for Rousseau, and it doesn't make much of a difference.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The sanitized story about Protestantism that has been passed down to us
is that it represented a revolt against corruption in the Church and
brought a focus on Biblical writing rather than Church traditions as a
source of authority. And it was indeed about those things. Partly.
But more than that it was a revolt against an idea, espoused by Saint
Aquinas, that we can come to know nature without the aid of religion (in
the insider terminology, we can understand nature without the help of
grace). The idea that part of the world that could be known and
understood without aid of religion helped ignite the Renaissance but was
an idea that Calvin in particular could not tolerate. In his view,
separation of grace and nature would lead to no end of troubles; every
aspect of our lives (science, culture, etc.) needed to be brought under
religious control.

I think this certainly accurately
describes some Calvinists. I for one have come across many American
Calvinist fideists. I wonder though, whether this accurately describes
the big picture.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Leading unitarian William Ellery Channing, in his own highly influential 1835 polemic "Slavery," quotes the well-known Christian ethicist Francis Wayland's "Elements of Moral Science" in one of the more elegant religious arguments of the era.

One criticism of "fideism" is that it calls for the abandonment of reason and common sense, but as we see, that critique is spurious:

I close this section with a few extracts from a recent work of one of our most distinguished writers; not that I think additional arguments necessary, but because the authority of Scripture is more successfully used than any thing else to reconcile good minds to slavery.

"This very course, which the Gospel takes on this subject, seems to have been the only one that could have been taken in order to effect the universal abolition of slavery. The Gospel was designed, not for one race or for one time, but for all races and for all times. It looked, not at the abolition of this form of evil for that age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence the important object of its author was to gain it a lodgment in every part of the known world; so that, by its universal diffusion among all classes of society, it might quietly and peacefully modify and subdue the evil passions of men; and thus, without violence, work a revolution in the whole mass of mankind. In this manner alone could its object, a universal moral revolution, have been accomplished.

For if it had forbidden the EVIL, instead of subverting the PRINCIPLE, if it had proclaimed the unlawfulness of slavery, and taught slaves to RESIST the oppression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civilized world; its announcement would have been the signal of servile war; and the very name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst the agitations of universal bloodshed. The fact, under these circumstances, that the Gospel does not forbid slavery, affords no reason to suppose that it does not mean to prohibit it; much less does it afford ground for belief that Jesus Christ intended TO AUTHORIZE IT.

"It is important to remember, that two grounds of moral obligation are distinctly recognised in the Gospel. The first is our duty to man as man; that is, on the ground of the relation which men sustain to each other; the second is our duty to man as a creature of God; that is, on the ground of the relation which we all sustain to God. --Now it is to be observed, that it is precisely upon this latter ground that the slave is commanded to obey his master. It is never urged, like the duty of obedience to parents, because it is right, but because the cultivation of meekness and forbearance under injury will be well-pleasing unto God. --The manner in which the duty of servants or slaves is inculcated, therefore, affords no ground for the assertion, that the Gospel authorizes one man to hold another in bondage, any more than the command to honor the king, when that king was Nero, authorized the tyranny of the emperor; or than the command to turn the other cheek, when one is smitten, justifies the infliction of violence by an injurious man."*

____

*Wayland's "Elements of Moral Science," pages 225 and 226. The discussion of Slavery, in the chapter from which these extracts are made, is well worthy attention.

As some of the panelists indicated, one of [J.] Budziszewski's main ideas is
to oppose what he calls "the Second Table Project." It is said that
Moses brought down from Mount Sinai Ten Commandments on two tablets of
stone. Traditionally, the first four commandments are identified as the
first tablet or table, and they concern the worship of God; the last
six commandments (beginning with honoring father and mother) are
identified as the second table, and they concern moral laws. Some
Christians (Roger Williams, for example) have seen here a separation of
Church and State, in that the Church enforces the first table of
theological law, while the State enforces only the second table of moral
law. The first table requires religious faith. But the second table
can be known by natural reason. The first table corresponds to divine
law that can be known only by those who are believers in the Bible as
divine revelation. The second table corresponds to natural law that can
be known by all human beings, even those who are not biblical
believers, because it depends on natural human experience. The second
table can stand on its own natural ground without any necessary
dependence on the supernatural. But this is exactly what Budziszewski
denies, because, he insists, there cannot be a natural law if there is
no divine lawgiver.

[...]

A third example of natural law correcting the Bible is recognizing the
wrongness of the Bible's endorsement of slavery. While the Bible
sanctions slavery (see my post here,
which includes links to other posts), Budziszewski knows by natural law
that this is wrong, and therefore he looks for some way to correct the
Bible to conform to his natural moral knowledge that slavery is wrong.
He writes: "Consider how many centuries it took natural law thinkers
even in the Christian tradition to work out the implications of the
brotherhood of master and slave. At least they did eventually. Outside
of the biblical orbit, no one ever did--not spontaneously" (The Line Through the Heart,
36). The explicit teaching of the Bible is that the "brotherhood of
master and slave" is consistent with preserving slavery as a moral good,
and this was the understanding of many Christians in the American South
before the Civil War. But Budziszewski rightly judges that Christians
had to correct the Bible by seeing that human brotherhood demands the
abolition of slavery as a great moral wrong.

In the
title of my post I used the term "weakness of fideism." Admittedly, it's
only a weakness if we understand the Bible's apparent sanction of
slavery to be problematic.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

I like the work of Leo Strauss and his followers more for their
method of analysis as opposed to their conclusions. Say what you want
about them, they have tremendously influenced "conversations" in
academic and intellectual circles.

Take, for instance, this new article written by professor of law and Donald Trump speechwriter F.H. Buckley in The American Conservative.
I generally don't agree with the tenor of the article. Though, I think
the article is interesting, makes some good points and is therefore worth
reading (which is what I think in general of T.A.C.).

This quotation below relates to the mission of American Creation:

[M]ost intellectuals on the right draw their inspiration
not from the Judeo-Christian tradition but from abstract theories of
natural rights that have little need of God. They revere Jefferson, but
as Walter Berns once asked me, just what kind of a god is “Nature and
Nature’s God” anyway? At most, He’s Descartes’s god, as seen by Pascal,
where he appears in Act I of the drama to give the system a “little
push” and then departs the scene. But if that’s all He is, why do we
need Him?

[...]

... By resting their political beliefs on
abstract axioms of natural rights they have subscribed to theories of
learned heartlessness; and it is a testament to their personal goodness
that they’re better than their theories.

One doesn’t learn empathy or kindness
from John Locke. Perhaps it’s not something one learns at all. The
natural lawyer says it’s written on one’s heart; the evolutionary
biologist says it’s coded in our genes, which perhaps comes down to the
same thing. But it’s not to be derived from abstract theories. At best
it’s a philosopher’s premise, not his conclusion, as it was for Adam
Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. We might get it from our
families, or be reminded of it by novelists such as Dickens, Hugo, or
E.M. Forster. Mostly, however, we get it from religious education and
belief.

[...]

... Even devout Christians will prefer to speak the language of natural law
and natural rights, conceding to the secular left the principle that
moral and political arguments can be framed only in terms that might
appeal to people of other or no faiths. But in so doing they abandon the
firmest and most encompassing foundations of our moral language.

... The natural-rights theorist can tell you what others
owe him, but not what he owes to others save for the thinnest of duties:
don’t harm others, don’t steal from them or defraud them. Does that
sound like a complete moral code? ....

This
is East Coast Straussianism, something the author learned from at the
very least Walter Berns whom he cites. This isn't West Coast
Straussianism. (Though, I've heard Berns, along with Michael Zuckert
categorized as "mid-Western," something in between East and West Coast
Straussianism.)

Berns may have been wrong on the
"Nature's God" part of the Declaration of Independence. The personal
writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin
demonstrate they believed in a warmer deity. Or perhaps there is some
chain of reasoning that demonstrates this "Nature's God" is more deistic
than even those authors understood Him to be.

The East
Coast Straussians thought natural rights were a "solid" place to rest a
political order, but also a "low" place, and therefore should be
supported but with a corrective. The explicit politics of revelation
(what Buckley argues for) is one such corrective.

The
Straussians are often termed "neoconservatives." I think many are; and
some are not. But Mr. Buckley is the furthest thing from a non-religious
Straussian neoconservative.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

I think we are destined to debate about what John Locke really meant. Straussian claims that he was a secret Hobbesian imbibed
atheist or something along those lines are too controversial to be
asserted (as opposed to wondered about).

He was a
secret something, probably theological unitarian of the Arian bent. He
had a lowest common denominator understanding of Christianity that was
so generously ecumenical that it got him accused of secret
Socianianism.

Locke was as Protestant as he was empiricist. As Jeremy Waldron
notes, “Locke was intensely interested in Christian doctrine, and in the
Reasonableness he insisted that most men could not hope to understand
the detailed requirements of the law of nature without the assistance of
the teachings and example of Jesus [i.e. the Bible].” This is a
repudiation, not an affirmation, of natural law—the abiding
epistemological expression of the Protestant one, at least until
Immanuel Kant came along. Only revelation is meaningful. By implication
then, Locke’s metaphysics was the perfect expression of Anglo-Protestant
Christianity, notwithstanding his very un-Protestant “tabula rasa,”
which was only a small setback. Such a setback is quite negligible in
light of the more predominating Lockean concomitance between a
meaningless empiricist nature and a meaningless Protestant nature—both
of which thrive in Locke’s philosophy. And this means that the concept
of “natural law” should be utterly anathema to Locke or the Lockean.

This
is why, Waldron continues, “like the two other very influential natural
law philosophers [being read by the Founders], Hugo Grotius and Samuel
Pufendorf, Locke equated natural law with the biblical revelation.”
Natural law equals Biblical revelation? What an intentional
misconstruing of opposites!

Natural law is what we know about
reality from nature, not from revelation. Locke, however had to proceed
like that because he wanted to overthrow the (ironically Catholic)
tyrant in 1688. And he wanted to do so even though natural law and
revelation are conceptually distinct. Indeed, such a distinction between
Natural Law (inherent in the two out of three of Catholicism’s teaching
voices the Reformation excised) and Revelation informed the sine qua
non of the Reformation, which repudiated the Catholic view of their
concomitance.

If Gordon accurately represents
Waldron, I agree
with Gordon and not Waldron's Locke. Natural law is not biblical revelation. But I
don't think either Locke or those other natural law thinkers equated
them as such. In fact, in his Second Treatise on Government, Locke noted that the "state of nature" -- foundational to his political
theory -- needs a law to govern it, and "reason ... is that law."

Rather
the argument is that reason and revelation are separate channels
that when properly put together will arrive at the same conclusion. I
saw, at Princeton, Waldron debate Michael Zuckert, who posits the esoteric
Hobbesian atheistic Locke theory. The debate was moderated by the late
great Locke scholar, Princeton professor Paul Sigmund. Sigmund told me
personally, off the record, he saw Locke as a "liberal Thomist."

Locke may well have
repudiated natural law; but if that's true, it's an esoteric conclusion.
Locke's exoteric texts don't do such. Rather, one could argue Locke
changed or weakened the classical understanding of natural law by
providing a metaphysically thin basis for it.

But ultimately
I think Locke made a good point when he, as summarized in the above quotation, "insisted that most men could
not hope to understand the detailed requirements of the law of nature
without the assistance of the teachings and example of Jesus."

Locke
also, if I properly understand his teachings on Christianity and the
limits of human understanding, thought the average person -- certainly the
people with below average intelligence -- (i.e., the "ignorant
fishermen" who were Jesus' original followers) might not be able to
understand all of the verses and chapters of the Bible and complex
doctrines that have developed in Christendom over the ages.

Yes. With three graduate degrees and having passed the bar exam in two states, I've
gotten through Aristotle and the natural law thinkers. And I've read the
Bible and so on. All of this can be very difficult to understand. Parts
of the Bible are as difficult to understand as the intricacies of
Aristotle and Aquinas.

Locke was NOT saying that whereas natural
law can be difficult, the Bible is easy. Rather he was saying that
Jesus' moral teachings were much easier for people of average or below
average intelligence to understand than what you get through the long
chain of reasoning required to understand the natural law and other complicated matters.

In
essence, Jesus here provides a shortcut to get to the same conclusions a very refined mind can get to through reason alone, examining nature. If a more
simple mind can't grasp the complicated intricacies of the Nicene
Trinity and other complex theological doctrines, and instead ends up
believing in something not orthodox, such shouldn't disqualify the
person from "Christianity" provided he believes Jesus a unique Messiah.

This is a
point that the Christian-Deists, Unitarians, and other expositors of
"Primitive Christianity" would later run with. And I don't see it as a
repudiation of natural law or equating natural law with biblical revelation.

Though it does strongly reinforce the point later made by Christian-Deists that Christianity
essentially was a republication of the law of nature. As it were the
"essential" parts of Christianity tended to be the simple parts, Jesus'
words, and moral teachings and example. Everything else was either superfluous
or up for grabs.

This includes what the canon of the Bible was. Especially whether some of the harder to understand books of the Bible like Revelation (Apocalypse) properly belonged.
Whether St. Paul was inspired or an original corrupter of Jesus' words.
I'm not saying Locke took such unorthodox positions on these matters.
But the Christian-Deists he inspired, using his method, did.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Before there was Sidney, there were the "Schoolmen," the Scholastics, the philosophical descendants of Thomas Aquinas such as the Jesuit priest Francisco Suárez, whose work informed Dutchman Hugo Grotius's seminal work on natural law.

The notion of liberty as a natural right predates the Enlightenment, the Whigs, and modern "rationalism."

SECT. II. The common Notions of Liberty are not from School-Divines, but from Nature.

Tho the Schoolmen were corrupt, they were neither stupid nor unlearned: They could not but see that which all Men saw, nor lay more approv'd Foundations, than, That Man is naturally free; That he cannot justly be depriv'd of that Liberty without cause, and that he dos not resign it, or any part of it, unless it be in consideration of a greater good, which he proposes to himself.

But if he unjustly imputes the Invention of this to School-Divines, he in some measure repairs his Fault in saying, This has bin foster'd by all succeeding Papists for good Divinity: The Divines of the reformed Churches have entertain'd it, and the Common People every where tenderly embrace it.That is to say, all Christian Divines, whether reform'd or unreform'd, do approve it, and the People every where magnify it, as the height of human Felicity. But Filmer and such as are like to him, being neither reform'd nor unreform'd Christians, nor of the People, can have no Title to Christianity; and, in as much as they set themselves against that which is the height of human Felicity, they declare themselves Enemys to all that are concern'd in it, that is, to all Mankind.

In the end, the only stretch of “intellectual reality” inheres in the American hagiography suggesting that Whig theory was a new American innovation in the late 18th Century…or even a new British one during the prior century…or even a new Northern European Protestant one during the century prior to that.

Whiggism is simply Anglified Catholic political theory imported by sola scriptura Protestants (many of whom were also Enlightenment empiricists) and turned directly against the Catholics in 17th century England—and somewhat less directly against the Catholics in 18th century America. Now how simple is that? Probably not simple enough to plagiarize effectively!]

[W]ith respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government
contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the
water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects.

[...]

All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the
day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or
in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke,
Sidney, &c. …

The bottom line of the New York
Times' article is that whereas people today tend to think "the Founders
of America" agreed in one voice, the fact is that they disagreed.

The
impression that they were so united in opinion, though, is arguably
their fault (or desire). We see the above quotation by Jefferson
stating, "All American whigs thought alike" and of course George Washington hoped they would when he cautioned against the political factions that were breaking out before his eyes, much to his chagrin.

And in Federalist 2, John Jay wrote eloquently about America's supposed homogeneity.

1.
Ancient Greco-Roman; 2. Biblical, with a focus on Protestantism; 3.
English Common Law; 4. Enlightenment rationalism; and 5. Whig, with a
focus on the British "Commonwealth"thinkers.

I
used to argue -- and it's possibly a correct argument -- that 4.
Enlightenment rationalism was the lens through which America's Founders
viewed the competing sources. But that's not Bailyn's argument. Rather,
his is that 5. the Whigs were responsible for "harmonizing" all of the
different sources.

And, indeed, speaking as Whigs, with
the above quotation by Jefferson as proof, America's Founders presented
the different ideologies as harmonized. (Whether the final result of
the ideological pot America's Founders stewed perfectly parallels that
of the British Commonwealth Whigs is questionable, see below.)

But
was it so harmonious? Apparently not.

Of Jefferson's sources (and using the above numbers), Aristotle
and Cicero were 1; Locke was 4; and Sidney was 5. Because they were both
professed Christians, Locke and Sidney could also qualify as 2 (and
there were plenty of patriot preachers and notable divines of that era
whose names we could plug in). Source 3, English Common Law, didn't have
a figure represented in Jefferson's quotation. But there is one figure
who unquestionably stands as the authority for such and that is
Blackstone.

So how does Blackstone "fit" with the
American Revolution in particular and founding in general? He was a Tory
who didn't think anyone -- including the Americans -- could overrule
Parliament's last word on what the rights of Englishmen were, the
antithesis of what America's Revolution stood for.

Likewise my studies of "republicanism" and Agrarian laws -- basically me reading Eric Nelson's work
-- demonstrate a tension, on economic policy, between the 1. Ancient
Roman view, which was more individualistic; and 2. British Commonwealth
Whig view, which was more egalitarian. And the Enlightenment liberal
view, i.e., Madison's, rejected British Whig egalitarianism in favor of a
more individualistic view closer to the Ancient Roman position.

As
I've noted before, arguably Madison's view prevailed during the
American Founding which suggests that modern scholars, like Bailyn (and
Gordon Wood) who stress "republicanism" over "liberalism" may have it
wrong. Or we can say that the "liberal" and "republican" strains of
Founding era thought were both important and competed with one another, and what prevailed is debatable.

On
a related note, I like the work the followers of Leo Strauss (with whom
I often disagree) have done putting the record of the American Founding
under the microscope. It's not so much their conclusions, but analysis
which I most appreciate.

I think the Straussians paid a
little more attention to Bailyn than he did to them, but the East
Coasters (Allan Bloom, Harvey Mansfield, the Kristol family) came to a
similar conclusion in that the different ideological underpinnings of
the American Founding were in tension with one another. They
particularly focus on how the "modern" Lockean view was not consistent
with either traditional orthodox Christian teachings or of the noble
pagans (Aristotle, Cicero).

On the other hand the West Coasters -- followers of the late Harry V. Jaffa -- tend to act as good modern Whigs and "harmonize."

The
possibilities as to what caused such to happen when and where it did
are endless. For instance, it could be that Providence simply willed it
to start taking off around 1800. Or, that advanced aliens who seeded
life on Earth decided that was the time to start filtering down to
humanity more knowledge that would lead to such dramatic advances. The
evidence for both of such cannot, alas, be falsified. So we need to look
somewhere else.

My explanation is that it was the
Enlightenment zeitgeist perfectly captured in the quotation below by
Ben Franklin in a letter written to John Lathrop, May 31, 1788:

I
have been long impress’d with the same Sentiments you so well express,
of the growing Felicity of Mankind from the Improvements in Philosophy,
Morals, Politicks, and even the Conveniencies of common Living by the
Invention and Acquisition of new and useful Utensils and Instruments,
that I have sometimes almost wish’d it had been my Destiny to be born
two or three Centuries hence. For Inventions of Improvement are
prolific, and beget more of their Kind. The present Progress is rapid.
Many of great Importance, now unthought of, will before that Period be
procur’d; and then I might not only enjoy their Advantages, but have my
Curiosity satisfy’d in knowing what they are to be. I see a little
Absurdity in what I have just written, but it is to a Friend who will
wink and let it pass, while I mention one Reason more for such a Wish,
which is that if the Art of Physic shall be improv’d in proportion with
other Arts, we may then be able to avoid Diseases, and live as long as
the Patriarchs in Genesis, to which I suppose we should make little
Objection.

This is for lack of a better term -- and
I'm sure we can come up with better than this -- classically
liberal, Enlightenment progressivism.

Yes, it's something scientifically based. But there's more to the story. These thinkers like Ben Franklin had a holistic view that every field of knowledge including
politics and theology were sciences.

The problem I have with Jack Goldstone's essay,
as it were, is that he's too particular in specifying and crediting
engineering. Yes, of course engineering is important. But so too are the
insights of economist Adam Smith and those who followed him. Economics
is not engineering. As Niall Ferguson notes, it's not just one thing;
it's a number of things. Thus, it's something more holistic than
specific.

Look at how such thinkers as Franklin viewed the "science" of political theology. It's not necessarily traditional
orthodox Christianity which had been established since 325 AD. But it's
also not necessarily the strictly deist God of Spinoza. (One could argue,
as Jason Kuznicki did in the original Cato series that the modern Enlightenment view would eventually grow into such, and perhaps then further towards agnosticism and atheism.)

And much of what they wrote was consistent with what's written in the
Bible. Indeed, we see Franklin using biblical examples as
inspiration for scientific advancements. But this approach is more free and forward thinking.

Many
of these "scientists of everything" were like Franklin (electricity),
Joseph Priestley (chemistry), Richard Price (finance), members of The Club of Honest Whigs. That's to whom I give chief credit for modernity's advances.

The
period in which they operated was "the Enlightenment" of the late 18th
Century. Ironically, the advances of modernity didn't start to take off
until 1800, which marks the end of that period. So we can say that the
late 18th Century Enlightenment is when the seeds were planted. To the
extent that pre-Enlightenment periods caused the Great Enrichment, we
would have to argue that they created the fertile soil for the fruits of
which the seeds of the Enlightenment rightly take credit.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

We ought to consider, what is the end of government,
before we determine which is the best form. Upon this
point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness
of society is the end of government, as all Divines and
moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the
individual is the end of man. From this principle it will
follow, that the form of government, which communicates
ease, comfort, security, or in one word happiness to the
greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is
the best.

All sober enquiries after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan
and Christian, have declared that the happiness of
man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue. Confucius,
Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities
really sacred, have agreed in this.

[...]

A man must be indifferent to the sneers of modern Englishmen
to mention in their company the names of Sidney,
Harrington, Locke, Milton, Nedham, Neville, Burnet, and
Hoadley. No small fortitude is necessary to confess that
one has read them. The wretched condition of this country,
however, for ten or fifteen years past, has frequently
reminded me of their principles and reasonings. They will
convince any candid mind, that there is no good government
but what is Republican. That the only valuable part
of the British constitution is so; because the very definition
of a Republic, is "an Empire of Laws, and not of men."
That, as a Republic is the best of governments, so that particular
arrangement of the powers of society, or in other
words that form of government, which is best contrived to
secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the
best of Republics.

Of Republics, there is an inexhaustable variety, because
the possible combinations of the powers of society, are capable
of innumerable variations.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Below is an email I sent to a libertarian friend of mine (for the
record, I am a libertarian, but am open minded on making exceptions that
many libertarians would not) for whom I have tremendous respect and
admiration. I sent him an email which he didn't respond to. It's below.

I know that John Milton was good on a lot of liberty issues. But I wonder what you make of his thoughts on economic liberty. Eric Nelson of Harvard has done a lot of interesting research that transcends ideological boundaries.

The
way I see it, Madison's vision, which is close to the laissez-faire
that libertarians would endorse, prevailed (in no small part because of
the hard work he and others did for that to happen). This is the
"liberal" stream of thought of the Founding era.

However,
the "republican" or we could say "commonwealth" view was something
arguably more economically egalitarian. This is a reason why some
notable left of center scholars -- the ones who aren't busy trying to
"deconstruct" the American Founding -- may stress "republicanism" over
"liberalism."

Nelson's thesis is,
regardless of Madison's vision prevailing at the American Founding, the
world we have today -- the "mixed" system of capitalism that currently
predominates geopolitics, where we have simultaneously inequality of
outcomes and private holdings, but also a government that steps in and
decides how much is too much and taxes affluence more in order to
redistribute -- is the vision of Milton and some other British
commonwealthsmen.

It's also an explicitly religious vision. I could go on.

Thoughts?

Yes
on page 56 of The Hebrew Republic, Nelson claims that we are living in
the age of Milton as opposed to that of Thomas Hobbes (I will have a
subsequent post where I argue that we are actually living in the age of
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau and the hebraic republicans represent a more
authentically Anglo example of the egalitarianism that the continental
Rousseau would later champion).

Did you get that? Nelson
isn't arguing that Milton prevailed during the time of the American
Founding. Rather, that the system that predominates TODAY in 1st world
nations -- not just the United States, but Western Europe, Australia,
Canada, the developed Asian nations, etc. -- traces to Milton and the
other hebraic republicans.

A question that interests me
is, did the Ancient Hebrews in fact have a "republic"? As I read the
text of the Bible, I don't see it. But I'm just some dude. And on faith
matters, I am radically individualistic. I will decide for myself how to
interpret the Bible, the context, not limited to but including, matters
of doctrine, which texts are inspired, what the errors are (if any) and
which books belong in the canon. And my faith beliefs change from day
to day.

But on theological matters, I am a nobody.
So I wonder what the prevailing theologians make of the idea that the
Ancient Hebrews had a "republic." I may be ignorant here but I can't
think of any current "leading" Christian theologian of whatever
ideological stripe endorsing the notion that the Ancient Jews had a
"republic." Not Pope Benedict, not R.C. Sproul, not Russell Moore, not N.T. Wright, not (the
relatively recently departed) Jaroslav Pelikan, not Miroslav Volf, not Bishop Spong, not Rachael Held Evans, etc. They may have made these arguments or addressed the issue; I'm just not aware of them.

In
the past, yes, very notable thinkers did make this argument which had,
according to Dr. Nelson, profound consequences. They took the notion of
"republicanism" that was entirely a matter of pagan Greco-Roman origin,
and grafted it onto the Old Testament. But in so doing, drafted what
they saw as the economic egalitarianism of Ancient Jews into the concept of
"republicanism."

The Ancient Greco-Roman republicans
on the other hand were, like James Madison, not economic egalitarians.
They weren't concerned with inequality of outcomes.

Milton
et al. did borrow from Jewish sources -- rabbis who were his
contemporaries or preceded him. But I too wonder
about where prevailing Jewish thought among the different strains --
conservative, reformed, Orthodox, etc. -- is on this matter.

Friday, September 30, 2016

One of the challenges in trying to articulate what "the Founders"
believed is that they often differed. In fact, as I've often noted,
there were different strains of thought that made up a "synthesis." And
those strains were in tensions with one another. Whig thought though
presented the synthesis as a unified whole. As in "all American Whigs
thought alike, etc."

One sentiment which united the
Whigs was "republicanism" was the best if not only viable form of
government. Certainly it was preferable to monarchy. The notion of
republicanism traces to Western Civilization's Greco-Roman heritage. And
the Founders who wrote the Federalist Papers, adopting the surname
Publius, imagined themselves as revived Roman republicans. Noble pagans,
if you will.

I
remember reading John Adams' rejection of Paine's argument that the
Ancient Hebrews had a "republic." American Creation commenter Lex Lata reminded me. As Adams wrote in his autobiography:

"I told him further, that his Reasoning from the Old Testament was
ridiculous, and I could hardly think him sincere. At this he laughed,
and said he had taken his Ideas in that part from Milton: and then
expressed a Contempt of the Old Testament and indeed of the Bible at
large, which surprized me."

Yes, as Eric Nelson discovered, John Milton was one of those figures who posited the concept of a Hebraic republic.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

After being president of Harvard,
Samuel Langdon was a delegate to New Hampshire’s ratifying convention in
1788. The Portsmouth Daily Evening Times, Jan. 1, 1891, accredited to
Samuel Langdon: “by his voice and example he contributed more perhaps,
than any other man to the favorable action of that body” which resulted
in New Hampshire becoming the 9th State to ratify the U.S. Constitution,
thus putting it into effect. There Rev. Samuel Langdon gave a speech
titled ‘The Republic of the Israelites An Example to the American
States, June 5, 1788, which was instrumental in convincing delegates to
ratify the U.S. Constitution:

Instead of the twelve tribes of Israel, we may substitute
the thirteen states of the American union, and see this application
plainly offering itself, viz. – That as God in the course of his kind
providence hath given you an excellent Constitution of government,
founded on the most rational, equitable, and liberal principles, by
which all that liberty is secured … and you are impowered to make
righteous laws for promoting public order and good morals; and as he has
moreover given you by his Son Jesus Christ…a complete revelation of his
will … it will be your wisdom … to … adhere faithfully to the doctrines
and commands of the gospel, and practice every public and private
virtue.”

I understand why a Mormon would believe in the theology of Langdon's address,
precisely because of when and where Mormonism was founded. Mormonism
incorporates various eccentric late 18th Century Americanist historical
dynamics into its theology. For instance, they believe as a matter of
doctrine that America’s Constitution was a divinely inspired document.

Because orthodox Christianity was founded one thousand and some
hundred odd years before America and thus teaches nothing special about
America as a particular country, serious scholars of political theology,
many of whom devoutly believe in orthodox Christianity and try to get
the faith right, understand these sermons and their premises
differently.

The notion that Ancient Israel had a “republic” that could serve as
an example to the newly established “United States” is as much a
creation of Whig and Enlightenment thought as it is “biblical.” And
since the concept of a “republic” actually derives from the Ancient
Greco-Roman tradition (for whom America’s Founders had an affinity)
arguably that ideological strand gets dragged in too here.

[They] seem to depict God’s role as something similar to
Rousseau’s legislator; He disinterestedly established the foundational
law for the benefit of society, but did not live under it. In their
version and consistent with democratic theory, God established it all
[quoting Langdon’s sermon] “for their happiness” rather than to achieve
the fulfillment of a sovereignly determined plan. By their account, God
submitted the laws to the people for their approval and acceptance (as
per Rousseau’s legislator).

— Frazer, PhD thesis, pp. 393-94.

If I remember correctly, Dr. Frazer claims Samuel Langdon was a "theistic rationalist" not a "Christian."
This may not be correct insofar as the "theistic rationalists" were not
orthodox on matters like Trinity and other traditional doctrines of the
faith. Langdon may well have been an orthodox Trinitarian Christian.

One
thing Dr. Frazer claims about the "theistic rationalists" is that their
God (unlike the "Christian" God) was man made; the key Founders and
those who influenced them remade God in their image. So Rev. Langdon may
have been an orthodox Christian. But it seems he's still revising the
biblical record.

Friday, September 23, 2016

... The Lutz study, you may recall, looked at the relative influence of
various Enlightenment philosophers on American politics before, during
and after the founding (from 1760-1805). Lutz, a history professor at
the University of Houston, and his co-author took a large number of
samples of political writings from that period and counted up the number
of references in those documents to people like John Locke,
Montesquieu, Sidney and others.

There are two different versions
of the lie about this study. Some claim that this study looked at
documents from the founding generation, for instance. But Federer goes
all the way and claims that the documents being studied were not just
from the founding fathers, but specifically from the 55 men who signed
the Constitution.

....

... This study started with 15,000 documents, then pared that down to
about 2200, then finally to 916 documents that were actually included in
the sample. The vast majority of them were not from any of the men who
signed the Constitution, or anyone who is rightly considered a founding
father at all. They were newspaper articles, pamphlets (which was the
dominant means of communication in those days) and such. A full 10% of
those pamphlets were actually reprinted sermons, which was very common
then, and the overwhelming majority of the Biblical citations found in
those documents came from those sermons.

But that’s just the
start. The study also broke down those citations by specific time
period, including 1787-1788, the two years when the Constitution was
being written and ratified. During that time, there is not a single
reference to the Bible from the Federalists, those who were advocating
the passage of the Constitution. The only ones during that time period
who referenced the Bible were the anti-Federalists, who used the Bible
to argue against the passage of the Constitution.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Here is a post from Jonathan Den Hartog on Mark Noll's analysis use of the Bible during during the revolutionary debates.

Noll's significant contribution is to be able to step back from all of
the documentation of the Bible in Revolutionary debates--and it was
massive--to be able to systematize the scholarship and make sense of the
welter of biblical uses. Some uses are simply rhetorical flourishes,
biblical language as artistic embroidery for a political point. On a
much stronger level, many Revolutionaries drew parallels between the
cause of the colonies and ancient Israel. Noll thus demonstrates how
"Hebraic" political thought could make in-roads into a biblicist
America. Still others made sustained arguments through biblical
exposition for one side or another.

Noll demonstrates extremely wide-ranging knowledge of the sources from
the Revolution, but he also offers incisive close readings of important
sermons and Biblical exchanges. I especially appreciated Noll's
attention to a sermon by David Griffith, a patriot Anglican in Virginia,
a sermon which comes as close as possible to earning Noll's approval of
its biblical usage. Noll is also extremely perceptive on the debate
between Tom Paine in Common Sense and the biblical rejoinders
offered by loyalists. By tracking their arguments minutely, Noll
demonstrates multiple interpretive strategies that were being used in
the colonies.

This reminds me of the exhaustive
studies I've done on George Washington's faith, trying to make sense of
what he believed. On the one hand, some scholars have said GW didn't
reference the Bible. That's false.

I have found some
evidence that GW believed objective truth can be found in both
"reason" and "revelation." But how he put them together remains a bit of
a mystery.

One thing GW never or almost never (I
hesitate to write in absolute terms) did was proof text verses and chapters
of scripture in an authoritative sense. Rather his uses were almost
always "rhetorical flourishes,
biblical language as artistic embroidery for a political" or some other kind
of point.

This is something secular people do all
the time. The Bible like Shakespeare greatly impacted the way we
express ourselves. And this is applicable BOTH to the time of America's
Founding AND in today's modern world.

Anyway here is an example from GW, taken from Mark D. writing at The New Reform Club. Addressing the Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island, GW said:

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in
this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other
inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and
fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.